


Demons

by AnnieHastur



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Canon Universe, F/M, POLITICAL ALLIANCE WITH BENEFITS, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 03:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9530222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnieHastur/pseuds/AnnieHastur
Summary: He's about to embark on a mission that has him haunted, he needs her reprieve.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Shameless OTP content, an attempt to set out for myself how I view their canon relationship, a political alliance that runs deeper. Set around the events covered in Jhin's flavor text, just prior to Zed and Shen leaving to track down Jhin following his escape.

It isn’t the first time he had come unannounced.

In fact she had never known, nor expected him to be any other way. Neither of them had ever considered alliance to entail schedule, nor had the intention to be tied down by such convention.

Of course she would always know when he arrived regardless.

The years she spent the only soul to walk — or float — this fortress left her so attuned to any other semblance of will that dared enter it, even a shadow in darkness would pique her. Still, he fancied himself a master of stealth and each time she would find herself humoring his attempts at crossing her threshold undetected.

But there is no such attempt today. He pivots in through the window and his descent betrays his weight. Loud. Careless.

“Evening, Zed.”

He waits by the great sill. She had been lounging on the divan for who knew how many hours now and his appearance had her lament the day she had thus far wasted to her own indecision. She’d hate for him to see that of her.

But she’d hate even more for him to see her contemplating the fault. She sits up before he can spot her, levitating until she’s cross-legged a foot above the mattress.

She doesn’t turn to him yet, an exercise in control.

“Syndra.”

His voice (that snarling, embittered grovel) is so clear today—he must have already removed his mask. The sense of vulnerability that had prickled through her upon being caught lounging without her headpiece dwindles. However faintly.

She waits for him to cross the room and take the armchair (headed, like all of her furnishings, with wrought iron befitting a throne) opposite her. Over the course of their encounters, it had become _his_ seat for when they convened.

But he doesn’t take it this time, rather pacing by her window. She counts his footsteps — uncharacteristically heavy — for three laps before he speaks again.

“I came to tell you — I will not be able to meet with you for some time. A month, at the least.”

“ _Hm_?”

She knew him to be forthright, to not waste a beat on pleasantries and get to the crux of his agenda for that day but this, this was…odd. Not in the content of his words, but their delivery at all.

She had gone a month without seeing him in the past — it would be weeks upon weeks between their encounters, one night she would spend intertwined with him but by morning he would be gone, a shadow in her bed, and she would hear nought for the next thirty. It was how he was. It was…amiss for him to come all this way to tell her just this.

She found herself musing his true intentions.

“You have…a mission?”

“Tomorrow I leave. For Zaun.”

His curtness infuriates her like it never had before. The exercise, she’s failed — she can’t go longer without looking at him. Without figuring him out.

She turns, and she expects to find his coal-like (black, shrouded in smoky shadow) eyes blaring back into her, filling her with that maddening, irresistible awe they always did. The closest thing she could liken to intimidation.

But those dark-stars don’t greet her. He’s turned to face her, but his eyes are on his feet. It’s a stance she’s seen before — but not from him. It’s the posture of a man who didn’t deem himself worthy of beholding her.

She’s disappointed.

She scoffs, folding her arms in front of her (she continues to hover, just high enough that her line of sight trumped his).

“Here I was plotting my own excursions. I could have _used_ you and the Order.”

“—I can leave the Order of Shadow at your charge. You know where to call upon them.”

He’s threatened. She knows this because there’s a hint of apology behind the usual gravel of his voice, and he still won’t meet her glance.

The Zed _she knew_ wouldn’t succumb so easily.

Especially not to what was such pathetic, petty longing. Was it not?

Truthfully, she had no present plans requiring his Order. She craved _him._ Her frustration, all of this spite that suddenly electrified her, that had her glare, yes — she could credit some of it to her ire at not being able to read him as easily as she was accustomed to, but was the rest not because she knew now she would not be seeing him? At least when he didn’t warn her beforehand she could thrill herself on the suspense until he slipped into her fortress (into her—) the next time. _But now—_

How utterly disgusted she made herself with this yearning. This wasn’t even the Zed she knew, the man she would read so well, relate to so absolutely because they were one in the same.

Zed didn’t fear God. Until this evening, he didn’t fear her.

Now he was compromised. He feared _something_.

“And what month-long engagement would the Master of Shadow have that would not make use of his own Order?”

“It does not concern them.”

It’s the most firm thing he’d said since his arrival. There’s a hint of his lost dominance there. (It excites her).

“Not politics then. A personal grievance.”

(Then it’s gone. He sighs.)

“Syndra—”

At last he crosses the sitting room, and she turns with him, her glare trailing him like a persistent wasp. His steel boots were still clumsy on the marble. She knows he isn’t walking with purpose, but because he can’t find words and can’t look at her and is buying himself time. He drops into his usual seat, elbows, eyes on his knees.

“Do you know of the Golden Demon?”

The words strike a tucked memory at the back of her mind. She had heard them before. But she couldn’t recall where — had they been within one of the tomes she’d seized from the archives and studied to contextualise after years of segregation, or a tip from a scout she had sent to survey the nation’s politics and report to her or an old wives tale she’d caught ear of in her youth at the marketplace. Whichever it was, she’d dismissed it as unimportant to her goals.

Syndra clicked her tongue, “Ought I?”

He hesitates, a pregnant pause.

“…No. It is beneath you.”

She curses herself for her lack of recollection, because she knows now he isn’t going to indulge her. Regret stains his voice — he wished he hadn’t brought it up to begin with.

But she supposed she didn’t need know the details. Yet. The knowledge of this demon’s hold on him was enough to confirm her suspicions.

“It haunts you, doesn’t it, Zed?”

He stiffens in his seat, and she knows she’s right.

He had come to vent to her before, of course. And she to him. But the catalyst had always been anger. Anger against the nation they swore to crush and revolutionise. Against a defector to his order or a scheme of hers that had not gone to plan. There had been nothing to be ashamed of then, though, because anger wasn’t weak. Anger was all they knew.

Fear though…fear was pathetic, that was what they had told one another. Fear couldn’t burn like anger could, convert to passion like anger could.

“Zed.”

She lowers herself, her toes greeting cold marble for what felt like the first time in hours. He chooses then to at last meet her gaze (he has a new scar on the rise of his cheek, slashing at shadows that sunk so deep beneath his eyes, they muddied the striking, _hungry_ stare she’d become accustomed to).

But what was to say if they melted the fear away, he couldn’t find fire again?

“You leave tomorrow. You can spend the night —that is why you came, is it not?”

She takes steps forth, standing before him, just out of reach of the chasm between his knees (and there’s trembling impatience in that between her thighs). She extends a hand, to pull him to his feet.

He clasps her wrist. The tips of his fingers are as stony as his face, but his lust had begun to crack through his gaze. She’s reminded then of how….unrivaled, his ambition was.

“ _Lie with me, Syndra_.”

His arrogance, even now — it thrills her. How fucking _entitled_ of him.

To walk into her castle, damaged and desperate and too proud to admit it. Like a hapless beggar waiting for her body’s charity, but rising from his knees so readily the moment she offered it.

“—After tonight you won’t know pleasure for a month. Will you?”

She falls her weight against his chestplate as he swallows her in embrace. The armor that covered him completely is slate cold as it always is, but a heat erupts in her nonetheless. The warm musk of his breath and his hands down her back, the blazing anticipation in her loins for what was to come.

If he was to be so entitled the least he could do was carry her to her bedchamber.

(His palm digs at her thighs, and he raises her. He cocks his chin upon her shoulder, and swings her. He knows where to go.)

“Forget pleasure. All I ask is _relief_.”

* * *

 

She presses her palm to his chest, now bare. She strokes her full hand downwards, past where the rough scars thatched his torso, where the patches of shadow felt like lakes of ice.

So purposefully had he designed his armor to hulk and tower and impose his greatness and yet when he stood before her naked, by the end of her bed, he seemed at his largest. She gazed upon his chest and shoulders and arms and the crisp definition in the muscle chiseled by firelight.

It was a crucial proof for her. That he was not incorporeal shadow filling a husk of metal but real, _breathing_ , _burning_ man (it pained her, long had she been denied human contact. How she needed this sight, this touch of him—)

She dips her hand and curls her fingers around his length — an assessment of his...eagerness.

Softly, she cackles, relieved. His breathing is ragged, plagued — but at least his hunger is as potent as ever.

“ _Syn…_ ”

He grunts and it becomes a beast’s growl. When she lit his deepest fire he could be so primal—his fingers spasm and rake through her hair, rough like they’re combing out knots that aren’t there, thumbs tipping her head so their brows tapped. They’re so close, the tips of her breasts tracing at his torso, his hardness nudging at the creak of her thighs. He’s desperate, so desperate, he’d scoop her up and fuck her then and there, on his feet if she let him and a part of her wanted that, the sex that was half spar and half dance and so many of her fantasies, but that wouldn’t do here. That wouldn’t free him of the demon.

“Master of Shadow.”

She cups his chin with the heel of her palm and using it, pushes herself back. She slinks away from him (his _hot_ , eager fingers didn’t let her go so easily; they traced her cheeks as she slipped away from him and felt as molten irons), landing on the mattress and kicking up her legs. She pulls herself back to the head of the bed.

(Apprehension. Never had she so completely surrendered, the mere notion of submission had until so recently, mortified her core. But she needed him, longed for him and tonight he needed to know dominance.)

She seizes her pillow, and with a vigor piercing her hesitation, tosses it aside. She lay herself down wholly, like the drawn skin of some slaughtered beast, spread for him, hair framing her like a sea of liquid silver.

“You are king. Ravish me.”

He makes a noise, and she thinks it’s a ghost of his ravenous laugh. She’s saved him.

Bedsprings groan as he comes to her like a crashing wave. Then he’s atop her on all-fours and she’s drenched in his heat and blood-metal-sweat aroma. He surveys her body and doesn’t waste a moment to whatever self-doubt plagues him, his wrist brushes her thigh and with two fingers he tests her (she’s electrified—), and his smirk is no longer a shadow. She pivots her hips upwards, reckless to receive him.

“ _HAH_ …”

He enters her, she bates her breath and the silence is so sharp in the darkness. He pushes deeper, deeper—how many times had she been filled by him and yet the euphoria always felt as overwhelming as it had the first — he’s blazing, shuddering and feels so _, so_ impossibly big. Her universe felt vaster.

They exhale on the same beat, he falls to his flanks and she’s crushed beneath his weight. It's almost enough to overwhelm her, it’s like he’s still armored for his bones are that heavy but like he has no skin for he’s as hot as his blood, and all the while he’s within her at his deepest.

“Ah…”

And then he works himself.

Rocking, ramming thrusts. He wields himself like a cudgel, mind and body devoted to this labor. Her heart thundered with every pounding motion, she wanted him to smash down her walls like she was yet another temple for him to raze to the ground. She raises her legs to allow him to search her deeper, to grind at her crown, and she squeezes them around his hind.

He grunts with ecstasy of his own and she watches him melt with it. But between the frenzy and lust and power-trip she traces the shade of discontent in his eyes — and in a single animalistic lurch he grabs at her waist, clutching her to her bone. She knew he wouldn’t be truly satisfied with himself until she was pleased. It was why she enjoyed him so.

So he fucks her harder, dominance as natural as battle for him. He’s grunting like a drum and his thrusts rampaged past what had a moment ago felt the end of her universe, his hands slid over her torso and are demanding, thick and calloused as they covered and then grabbed and then pulled at her breasts like he could tear them from her and she’d rather he did than let go.

And he’s pounding. Crashing. Bodies slapping like a storm and her loins are electrified on every impact and she’s gripping at the spikes of his hair and crying out because he had broken through every reservation she’d ever held in heart—

"Hkk—"

One thrust strikes her like a match to furnace, and she’s unleashed.

The boundless power within her bloomed to its most magnificent and it took every bit of the will she prided herself on to keep it within her, from alighting this fortress. She screams, convulses along with it as she’s blinded, body arching to the height of fulfilment. In that moment she’s all she ever dreamed and desired and yearned. _Queen._

When her head is cleared of lust it’s to view her King in frenzy of his own. At his climax Zed is wild, eyes intense, body powerful as he shudders and groans something thunderous. He spills within her and collapses unto her, the dull, pleased haze of her own body numbing the impact.

And then they lie there in a lofty castle, higher than she could ever hope to raise her fortress. The clouds part and suddenly their breaths are revealed as sharp, gulping for air, hearts racing. For moments, he rocks against bosom like quieting ocean waves. How long they’re like that, until he rolls off her. There’s a void where he is weight is no more; it isn’t painful, but potent, drawing her back to him. She rolls too, reaching for his shoulder and pulls herself close to him, so she can feel the heat radiating from him as the sweat — both his own and hers — evaporated from his body.

He stares at her. He stared at her so often, so purposefully as though he was both searching for and had struck gold. His eyes were clear again, shadowed, but piercing, confident, free of the demon’s clutch.

He wouldn’t thank her, but she didn’t want it. He was too proud for that, and that was how she needed him. But when he drew a great sigh, tipping his forehead into hers, she hears how he needed her just as vitally.

“After tonight...wait for me.”

* * *

 

He slept at her side. His breathing had loosened. No longer was it heavy and tortured as it had been when he arrived.

Listening to him had become a post-passion routine for her. Though he exhausted her so, she refused to sleep. Even to him, she would not surrender her last bastion of control, consciousness. Not yet.

Often, he’d be the same and they’d stare at one another, searching pain and anger and offering the solidarity in silence, but tonight he had given in to slumber. She wondered, idly, if sleep had been the true demon evading him.

She wondered many things. What this creature he would set out to defeat was, why it instilled such trauma in a man such as him. Why he felt so compelled to do this alone. What more could she do for him, what was she to him? Until now, no matter how intimate their uses for the other had been, their relationship was little more than allegiance to a common purpose, two ruthless warriors taking all in their power, enabling one another, to crush a nation that had wronged them so. But now she felt like more than that, like everything from a two coin whore to his queen. Something felt as though it had changed within him. Within her.

But at that same time, nothing had. At the onset, they’d sworn together to vanquish demons.

And by their power, they would.


End file.
